Hold the front page
‘My first day as a journalist, in 1967, was made memorable when a fellow reporter told me that the only people who entered the profession were either mad or not tall enough to make the Foreign Legion,’ writes subscriber John Phelps.
‘I had previously worked in insurance for eight years and, perhaps because I happen to be 6ft 1in, it was not hard to see he was a wind-up merchant! ‘“You need a completely different attitude of mind,” he told me more seriously over a pint a bit later on. And he was dead right!